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Saturday, January 14, 2006

Artist Way: week 8 check in

Small movements lead us to the larger movements in our creative lives. -Julia Cameron

This was a pretty good week for me. I completed morning pages 6 out of 7 days, but I ran out of time for an Artist Date. Synchronicity? Working the chapter that "tackles" time when a project at work became especially demanding of my time. Also this quote on time from Carl Sanburg turned up on the quotations weblog:

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.-Carl Sandburg

Last week I said that I thought Julia gave us a great basis for resolutions by reminding us that Treating myself like a precious object will make me strong. This week I would add that I think the steps of the goal search task is one of the best approaches to goal-setting I've encountered--perfect for setting goals for 2006. I found it a great way to go from "dream" to long term goal to near term goal to what I can do now; from ideal-ideal to ideal to what's possible now. I set some quilt-related goals that, for the first time, feel realistic for me, given the reality of my life. I also believe that they are small movements which will lead to larger movements in my creative life.

I really liked the tasks of describing ideal and ideal-ideal days. I realized that my ideal day in the world I inhabit now would have to be a 30-hour day--no wonder I'm having problems finding time for morning pages AND exercise AND breakfast in the morning before I go to work. I was surprised that I included a lot of detail about things that would make my day-job ideal. (I realized that it wouldn't take much to make that work so much more fulfilling).

Part of my ideal-ideal day would be spending half my days making things. I gave myself the gift of half a day working in my studio space and made some progress on the daisy work-in-progress: